Penny Russell

Penny Russell reviews 'Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm' by Alan Atkinson

November 2022, no. 448 • 21 October 2022

'If we take it for granted that John Macarthur was a bad man,’ writes Alan Atkinson, ‘then all the surviving evidence takes on a colouring to match. If we think that, then every word he wrote is suspect. On the other hand, leave the question of character open and the evidence takes on a new richness altogether – a deeper and more complex humanity. That is what I aim to do in this book.’ I ... (read more)

Penny Russell reviews 'The Coast' by Eleanor Limprecht

August 2022, no. 445 • 28 July 2022

A child of nine is taken to Sydney for the first time to visit her mother, a patient at the Coast Hospital lazaret. Upon arrival, she learns that she, like her mother, has leprosy. Her fate is fixed from that day; she will live the remainder of her life in the lazaret. She takes the new name of ‘Alice’ to hide her former self, and the world closes in upon her. There will be no more school, no ... (read more)

Penny Russell reviews 'Lessons from History: Leading historians tackle Australia’s greatest challenges' edited by Carolyn Holbrook, Lyndon Megarrity, and David Lowe

July 2022, no. 444 • 25 June 2022

Lessons from History is a big, ambitious book. Its twenty-two essays – amounting to some 400 pages of research, reflection, and references – seek to pin down, in accessible form, the combined expertise of thirty-three practitioners of history and related fields. Together they address a mélange of pressing issues facing Australia today, testament to the diversity of contemporary Australian his ... (read more)

Penny Russell reviews 'An Uncommon Hangman: The life and deaths of Robert "Nosey Bob" Howard' by Rachel Franks

May 2022, no. 442 • 23 April 2022

When the offer came to review this book, I accepted enthusiastically, and unthinkingly added, ‘That sounds fun!’. Upon reflection, I deleted that last sentence: what would it say about me, I wondered, that I should expect the account of a hangman and his work to be entertaining? I thought better of the sentence, but the anticipation remained. ... (read more)

Penny Russell reviews 'Making Australian History' by Anna Clark

March 2022, no. 440 • 04 February 2022

There are many ways one might write a history of Australian history, but from any angle it is a heroic project. In Making Australian History, Anna Clark is open about the difficulties, the possibilities, and her choices. How do you make sense of Australian history, she asks, amid a ‘swirl of changing sensibilities, methods, culture, politics and place’? How do you trace the story of a discipli ... (read more)

Penny Russell reviews 'William Cooper: An Aboriginal life story' by Bain Attwood

December 2021, no. 438 • 23 November 2021

The name of Yorta Yorta elder William Cooper shines bright in the history of Aboriginal activism in Australia between the two world wars. It is linked with the formation of the Australian Aborigines’ League, of which he was the founding secretary; the Day of Mourning on the anniversary of white settlement in 1938; and a petition intended for George V, signed by almost 2,000 Aboriginal people and ... (read more)

Penny Russell reviews 'Moving Stories: An Intimate History of Four Women Across Two Countries' by Alistair Thomson

September 2011, no. 334 • 23 August 2011

Gwen Good’s migration to Perth in 1963 turned out well. She loved Australia, the climate that turned life into one long summer holiday, and the house that she and her family soon acquired. She was an active member of her church, and a contented wife and mother who revelled in her children. By the 1980s she was ready to give away the bundle of reel-to-reel tapes on which, decades before, the fami ... (read more)